Hooked Up In T'Ville!

Hello from Townsville! We finally managed to get the photos off our old camera so here are a couple of underwater shots from Opal Reef off Port Douglas that we managed to snap before the camera shat itself!

Although, we were worried that we might encounter some of these guys in the water! The lycra suit is supplied to ward off stingers but they forgot to give us the knife. Luckily we didn't run into some of these nasty ones!

After all the excitement of Brons' first barramundi at Bluemetal Creek he wasn't fully satisfied so he did it all over again and managed to bag another Barra, a Mangrove Jack and a nice Flatehead as well. Ruth caught nothing! The rain was not really letting up and we got rather soggy one night walking back to camp after and evening fish, so we packed up and drove to Townsville to spend some time with Cousin Regan.

We've had a week in Townsville now and Rene has been looking after us too well and we don't want to go. It's been great catching up with Rene and little William. We have been using her place as a base to go fishing about the area. We have checked out a few places (Reid River, Majors Creek (down towards Charters Towers), Crystal Creek, Toolakea Beach, Saunders Beach, Pallarenda Beach and a couple of spots on the Ross River (Aplins Weir). All we have managed to turn up are a couple of Sooty Grunter at Reid River and a few Tarpon at Aplins Weir. Not big fellas but lots of fun on the smaller fly rods and our first Tarps for the trip.

Here's one of the little fellas.

And here is a bit of by catch!

Ouch and Bugger this one hurt. Abandoned the fishing for the day after this incident. Headed to home to see if Nurse Rene could extract the hook. It was in pretty deep and despite considerable yanking it wasn't going anywhere. Off to the Townsville hospital! Had to have a ring block put in to extract it and a tetanus shot for good measure but all is good now. Oh just in case you were wondering it's Ruth's finger.

Brons has been busy the last day or so changing the head gasket on Lulu. We decided to change it seeing we have been loosing water over the last week or so. Although we only have 1400km to go we didn't really want Lulu to die prematurely. Will be sad to leave Rene and Will. We have been totally spoilt with beautiful food and lovely hospitality. We'll probably hit the road on Saturday and head to Ayr where we hear there is some good flats fishing.